Our Last Five Minutes

Known best for her book, The Color Purple writer Alica walker said this to a group in receiving the California Governor's Award for Literature as she wondered what we would do if we knew we had just five minutes left on earth:

Let our awareness of and our tenderness to the most helpless be our diamonds and our gold. Our last five minutes on Earth are running out. We can spend those minutes in meanness, exclusivity, and self-righteous disparagement of those who are different from us, or we can spend them consciously embracing every glowing soul who wonders within our reach… Perhaps the greatest treasure left to us, maybe the only one, is that we can still choose.